5:25PM: On train between Marks Tey and Colchester en route to Harwich International: Icelandic volcanoes. Of all the shit that was going to keep me from getting to Roadburn today, “Icelandic volcanoes” probably wouldn’t have been last on my list, but they’d have been close.

BBC1 says it’s totally unprecedented in British aviation history and that there were over 600,000 passengers affected. One thing I did not feel as I tried to make my way through the crowd at Heathrow was alone.

Last time I was going through London I also got stuck at Heathrow, but I don’t think it’s a fate thing. Too random. I mean, fucking Icelandic volcanoes? That’s the kind of shit that just happens on planet earth and you can either laugh at it or cry. Waiting on an hour on the customs line after getting off the plane following a seven-hour overnight flight out of Newark, I did a bit of both. In fact, as I told the customs agent, I did all five of the stages of grief on that line: denial, depression, anger, bargaining and finally acceptance. I don’t think she got the reference, but I was having fun anyway.

By the time I left Heathrow, some four hours of standing on line later, theorizing and failing at various transit alternatives to get me to the The Netherlands, I was having much less fun – despite the little bags of chips (“packets of crisps,” if you prefer) and bottles of water security was handing out to the tens of thousands of us standing there. Literally. Tens of thousands. British Airways is completely grounded until at least tomorrow morning. Much of Northern Europe is, actually, and it’s only thanks to the savvy workings of The Patient Mrs. that I’m going to make it to Tilburg at all. But not today, which means, principally, no Goatsnake.

The lineup for last year’s Roadburn was amazing, but the band that finally made me sign the dotted line was Saint Vitus. This year it was Goatsnake. I paid $700 for that flight over, more or less to see Goatsnake. Sure, to see the other bands playing today, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, and to write about the festival, shoot video, take pictures and all the rest, but Goatsnake was what scientists call the catalyst. The announcement they were playing ignited a chemical reaction in me the result of which, now, is that I’m writing this on a train headed to Harwich International.

As I alluded above, it’s all on The Patient Mrs. at this point that I’m getting to see any of Roadburn. Prospects of flying tomorrow are more or less nil, and all the trains are booked. But she found me a ferry that runs between Harwich and The Netherlands, which means I’ll be traveling overnight again and taking more trains in the morning, but I should get there well in time for the start of festivities tomorrow. I’m going on a cruise! As I write this (will post it as soon as I hit someplace with wi-fi), Ancestors and Oresound Space Collective are on stage, The Wounded Kings will be shortly. That would have been nice. I’d trade an overnight cruise for that.

But this is the stuff of life: adventure. And quite frankly, I’m too tired and too hungry to dedicate my full energies to feeling bad for myself. I don’t know yet if this has affected the festival at all – as I said, most of Europe is grounded – but I have the feeling this is a me-only kind of thing, that everyone else is there having a great time and that Goatsnake will have been the best thing ever and the merch will be well picked through by the time I show up tomorrow. Mark the day (pretty much all of it, on pretty much every level) a loss and move on.

Tags: Roadburn, The Netherlands, UK

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.